Townsend Addresses Girls School
 

By Linda Perlstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 12, 2003; Page B04
 

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who has made few public appearances since losing the Maryland governor's race last fall, addressed graduates last night at the all-girls Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda.

In her introduction, Headmistress Anne Dyer said that the former lieutenant governor, who attended Stone Ridge from fifth through 10th grades, has taken a new job, heading Operation Respect. The nonprofit organization, founded in 2000 by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary, offers a school curriculum centering on character education and the prevention of bullying and violence.

On a dais outside the school's red-brick Hamilton House, Townsend commended the 83 graduates, all in white dresses, for the way they handled a particularly difficult period in history, with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, anthrax scare and snipers. She told of making adobe bricks from mud and manure on an Indian reservation when she was young and of winning a most-improved award for orderliness at Stone Ridge. She encouraged the young women to be not just unembarrassed by their parents but proud of them.

Ethel Kennedy was in the audience of 1,000, and her daughter told the story of her own high school graduation. Ethel Kennedy, she said, was so bored by the speaker that she used the time to memorize the Magnificat from the graduation program.

In her speech, Townsend made no reference to her plans, though she gave plenty of advice to the graduates about their own. "I can tell that there are some of you who face the future with a few doubts. I know the feeling," said Townsend, who made reference to the slayings of her father, Robert F. Kennedy, and her uncle, then-President John F. Kennedy.

"Even with the most wonderful of families and the best education, it is still possible to not know what you're put on Earth to accomplish," she said.

Whatever they pursue, Townsend told the graduates, she hopes that they participate in civic life. They may think it rough, too corrupting or based too much on compromise, "but that's not enough of a reason to give up on politics."

Townsend has kept mostly out of the public eye since her loss to Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. in November. In January, she addressed the Maryland Democratic Party luncheon in Annapolis, and in May, when she was in Pittsburgh to receive a women's leadership award at Chatham College, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a question-and-answer session with her.

After choosing Townsend as speaker, Stone Ridge received many e-mails from anti-abortion activists{ndash}who are not affiliated with the school, according to a school spokesman{ndash}who thought it inappropriate for a supporter of abortion rights to speak at a Catholic institution. The students were given the opportunity to change the speaker, but they stuck with Townsend.

About 15 protesters lined up with signs along Cedar Lane welcoming graduation guests to the "abortuary" and "chop shop." Townsend acknowledged the issue by telling the graduates, "I see today that you are ready to take on controversy and tough decisions. Thank you."
 
 
 

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